The average gambler spends $80 a year on gaming, according to Global Betting and Gaming Consultancy. But figures vary, from 6$ in Africa to more than $750 in Oceania. Singapore tops the charts, spending more than twice its Asian rival Hong Kong.

In the last week, much of the discussion around Greece’s travails has been around the need for further modernisation and progress made since the crisis. On one side the economist Francesco Giavazzi emphasised the continued need for structural reforms, while Karl Whelan stressed the huge improvements made by the Greek government in terms of reforms, public spending and fiscal consolidation.

Measuring a country’s level of “modernity” is not easy, but the following charts attempt to show how Greece compares and what has changed since the financial crisis. Read more

Only 45 per cent of Greeks felt like they were citizens of the EU when last surveyed, the lowest share of any member country. Britons and Italians follow closely behind, with roughly only half of those surveyed feeling like EU citizens. Read more

Leo and his mother walk past a primary school in South-East London, just around the corner from their house. The 4 year-old asks why he is not attending that school, as they still have to walk another five minutes to the bus station, spend 40 minutes on the bus and then walk another five minutes to reach the school he actually attends.

Global food prices have been trending downwards and are at their lowest since late 2009, according to the UN food and Agriculture Organization. Prices are down 20 per cent on a year ago, with cereals and dairy responsible for most of the fall

Connections with family and friends are the most popular route to a job in Spain, with close to half of Spaniards and two-thirds of foreigners using this method. Only a small proportion used job agencies.

The main thing international businesses want to see from the UK government, just so happens to be the one thing that just is not going to happen at any point soon.

Forty-three per cent of respondents to the latest FT/Economist Global Business Barometer said that committing Britain to staying in the EU was in the top three most important things the new government could do for business. Read more

This is a guest post by Professor Sir Nigel Shadbolt, Chairman and Co-Founder, Open Data Institute

The UK is a world leader in open data. Open data is data that is published for anyone to use for any purpose at no cost. Open data about transport, spending, health, crime, the environment, mapping and much more is now freely available from the UK government. We are also seeing companies release some of their data as open data. Open data is not usually personal data unless it is released as aggregate or anonymised data that does not identify an individual. Read more

“The good school” is the title of the reform to the Italian educational system proposed by the Prime Minister Matteo Renzi that was approved by the lower chamber of parliament on the 20th of May and that now needs to be approved by the upper chamber in the next few weeks.

In the words of the Ministry of Education Stefania Giannini the reform is aimed at improving “autonomy, transparency, responsibility, fair valuation and merits” in the educational system. The reforms involve funding for hiring thousands of temporary teachers on permanent contracts, more training, the introduction of a one year trial for new teachers and larger school autonomy among other – sometimes controversial – measures. Read more

After a month of silence from the Bank of England as a result of purdah – the constitutionally imposed pre-election quiet period for public bodies – front row seats for Wednesday’s inflation report are at a premium. Read more

Before Labour tear themselves apart trying to figure out how to proceed from the general election result it’s worth taking a look at how the voters behaved.

The data suggests that Labour’s problems are far more nuanced than a one dimensional disagreement about economic positioning, but reflect deeper structural shifts that can be seen right across Europe. Read more

Most seats in the UK are projected to declare the winner between 2am and 5am in the general election held today. Labour leaning seats, which tend to be in urban areas and have lower turnout, are often the first to declare.

When the Conservative Liberal Democrat coalition took office in 2010 the majority of the public told pollsters that the economy was the most important issue facing the country. As the economy has recovered and the financial sector appeared more stable, it declined in importance in voters minds.

However, concern about the economy fell faster and further than worries about unemployment. In fact the percentage saying that unemployment is one of the important issues facing the UK is roughly the same as it was in 2010 despite record job growth. Either voters aren’t paying attention or they’re using unemployment as a shorthand for wider concerns about insecurity and the conditions of employment. Read more

Demographic change is creating major headwinds for the US economy, as confirmed by its disappointing first quarter GDP growth of 0.2 per cent. Consumption accounts for around 70 per cent of US GDP, and new data on household spending from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) demonstrate how the ageing of the US population is creating major structural change in the economy. Read more

Here’s a simple question: which of Britain’s parliamentary constituencies have seen the biggest job market recoveries since the coalition government took office in 2010?

The answer, I thought, might well generate a news story in the week of the UK general election. So I downloaded a time-series of the number of Jobseeker’s Allowance benefit claimants in each constituency. (I used JSA claimant data because, when you’re looking at small geographical areas, they’re far more accurate than survey-based measures of employment and unemployment.) Read more